You Pursue a Wall Street Cabal. Or Do You?

From left, Amy Overman, Amy Sherman, Jorge Cordova and Danny Bowes searching for clues in Lower Manhattan.Credit
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

For 250 years Bydder Financial has been one of the most powerful forces in the global economy. It has underwritten the expansion of American multinational corporations, shaping the destiny of smaller countries to suit the priorities of the United States and of Bydder itself. From its august headquarters on Broad Street, barely a block from the New York Stock Exchange, Bydder stands astride international commerce like a colossus (or perhaps Croesus).

So when the firm offered me a job recently and invited me to an orientation session, I leapt at the opportunity for a glimpse inside one of the most fabled and feared forces on Wall Street. Yet by the end of the afternoon I found myself embroiled in an ancient conspiracy involving secret payoffs, a battle for control of third world natural resources, and a conflict between Bydder and a militant anticorporate underground.

O.K., fine, Bydder is not a real company; there is no secretive, incredibly wealthy downtown finance cabal that has been plotting world domination since before the American Revolution. But the 14th-floor conference room I visited was real. The tall, blond woman who met me there and introduced me to other recruits was certainly real. While subsequently investigating the streets and parks of the financial district, the phone calls and text messages we received were definitely real (as are the Web sites for Bydder and its foes). The pamphlet-wielding agitator we encountered on Broadway and the undercover anti-Bydder operative we met in a bar were real. And by the end of the afternoon the choices we had to make about our core values and loyalties felt a lot like moral and ethical reality.

It is all part of “Red Cloud Rising: The Fifth Wall,” an innovative, genre-defying entertainment created by the director, producer and actress Gyda Arber. Call it an alternate-reality game played in primary reality. Call it avant-garde performance art. Call it whatever you want. I just call it brilliant.

“Red Cloud Rising” is theater outside the theater. It unfolds like real life, especially in the way we deal with people these days, not just in person but through phone calls, texts and e-mails. But it is more personally engaging than traditional theater. You can’t just sit back and watch (or fall asleep) during the performance. You have to get up on your feet and participate. You have to walk around discovering landmarks, uncovering clues and solving puzzles. You have to talk to people. You have to make decisions.

That can be a simultaneously exhilarating and daunting proposition. In “Red Cloud” the traditional gamer is wrenched off the sofa, and the traditional theatergoer is plucked from a comfortable seat in the darkness and placed onstage. And you find yourself on one of the most dynamic, exciting stages in the world, the streets of New York City. So while you pass through the rabbit hole into a series of clandestine meetings and alternately cryptic and frantic phone calls and texts, you are surrounded by an unending cast of extras: people going about their everyday lives.

That means that everyone’s experience is different, and it also means that you may not be quite sure where the game ends, and reality begins again. While I scurried along Maiden Lane clutching a box of purloined, incriminating financial statements, I was accosted by two large men in a black S.U.V. who wanted to know if they could pull into the garage I was walking past. Were they a Bydder security team keeping tabs on me? A rogue anti-Bydder cell after my stolen balance sheets?

Suspicious and entirely caught up in the fantasy, I almost blurted out in response, “Who are you working for?” Good thing I didn’t, because it turned out that they were just two guys from New Jersey trying to find a parking spot.

As it unfolds, you become aware that Ms. Arber has created a rich, internally consistent back story that intertwines real history and geography — and real people and places — with fictional storytelling. Rather than impose an arbitrary plot onto reality, Ms. Arber has picked out a few cornerstones of reality, then layered her imagination atop them. Sidewalks, cemeteries and dry cleaners all play roles, as do professional actors, including Ms. Arber as the mysterious recruiter Charlotte Gaffney.

A day after I thought “Red Cloud” was over, I received an e-mail from Ms. Gaffney welcoming me to the Bydder family. “As a member of the Bydder team, you have a lifetime tenure at our company,” she wrote. “Your assignments will come when you least expect them, as will your rewards.”

Then, a week later, I received another e-mail, this time from the anti-Bydder conspirator Rene Veart.

It contained only one line: “Do you seek the truth?”

“Red Cloud Rising: The Fifth Wall” runs through Saturday and is part of the Game Play festival at the Brick Theater; (718) 907-6189, bricktheater.com.

A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: You Pursue a Wall Street Cabal. Or Do You?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe